


Burning The Dust

by raendown



Category: Naruto
Genre: Family Feels, Gen, Sort Of, Time Travel Fix-It
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-09
Updated: 2018-04-13
Packaged: 2019-04-20 21:31:13
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 16,422
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14269953
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/raendown/pseuds/raendown
Summary: A coup hidden in the shadows for decades, a scroll with a seal he didn't mean to activate; Naruto finds himself whisked away from Konoha to a destination unknown and meets a little girl who appears to be - his mom?





	1. Chapter 1

Harsh breathing filled the small space he was cramped in to no matter how hard he clamped a hand over his own mouth. Naruto closed his eyes and tried to calm the thundering of his heart but it was no use. Several tears squeezed out to trickle down his cheeks, running along the creases of his cheeks and dripping from the end of his chin. Salt gathered in the bags under his eyes and Naruto took a moment between gasping for air to wonder when the last time was that he’d had a decent night’s sleep.

But how could he now? To have been betrayed by one of his closest friends, to know that his friend’s hand had been forced in the cruelest of ways, how could one possibly sleep when his waking hours were already a nightmare? He was certain – more than certain – that Sai had never wanted this. The day Danzo died and the seal which had blemished Sai’s tongue for years disappeared, of course all of them thought he was free of ROOT’s clutches for good. Not for a moment had any of them suspected a separate hidden seal of which even Sai was unaware to activate more than a decade later and force him to take actions he would otherwise never dream of. Worse than watching it all happen was knowing that somewhere deep inside of himself Sai was screaming at his own body to lay the blade down.

Clenching his jaw through the tears, Naruto slammed his fist forward against the bookshelf he’d hidden himself behind. Then he winced as the sound reverberated through the room and several books and scrolls showered down on top of his head to make an even louder ruckus. Surely that had been heard by someone. He would need to find another place to squirrel himself away while he tried to think of a plan.

With his head still whirling from the disturbingly efficient coup Shikamaru had only just convinced him to escape from, it was understandable that he didn’t take much notice of what precisely was falling down around him. He’d chosen this bookshelf because it was dusty and forgotten looking, obviously a part of the file rooms where no one had bothered to come in ages, so it had seemed like a good hiding spot. A thin layer of chakra under his feet had kept him from leaving any footprints to give himself away as well. With a sigh, Naruto leaned back on his palms to gather his wits about him.

Then he cried out in surprise as a bright light burst out of the scroll he’d just set his hand down upon, golden chains erupting out of nowhere to wrap around him and hold tight. Immediately he limned himself in his own golden light, activating his Kyuubi powers on instinct, but it had almost the exact opposite effect than he wanted it to. Rather than granting him extra strength, the Kyuubi’s chakra reacted to the chains like a long lost soul finally finding comfort, soothing him against his own will, leaving only the deepest of his consciousness to rage and twitch in futile protest as he was dragged inexorably down, down, down, extinguishing his Kyuubi cloak before he ever got to use it for anything.

Only when the thought crossed his mind that he really should have hit the floor by now did he realize that his eyes had closed again. They snapped open to see a strange vortex surrounding him, colors and darkness melding together and swirling in circles like the spiral he used to wear on his old jacket. Yet the foreign lassitude induced by the glowing chains kept him placid and stopped him from panicking, allowing him to distantly wonder if he was somehow getting sucked in to another dimension like when Kakashi-sensei used to have his kamui jutsu. That would suck. He would much rather stay in his own dimension where he still had a chance of protecting the friends who were still fighting against the uprising after Sai’s mind and many other former members of ROOT had been taken over by latent seals.

It took a little while for the colors to melt away and when they did the chains dropped at the same time, fading away to nothingness. As soon as they were gone Naruto sprang up, no longer forcibly calm, and wrenched his head in every which direction to take stock of his surroundings. He recognized nothing but that wasn’t much of a surprise if he really had hopped through a portal in to another dimension.

Wherever he was it was beautiful, he could admit that much. The grass and trees were a lush green, the bits of sky visible through the foliage covered with clouds of a soft gray, and the air was the freshest he had ever breathed. As Konoha expanded over the last few years and moved in to a more industrial era, Naruto had noticed the air getting muggier with all the factories popping up. Breathing fresh air again was like a half-forgotten memory. Filling his lungs with a long, deep breath, he caught just the slightest hint of salt on the back of his tongue. Could he be near the sea somewhere?

Since standing around here in the middle of the trees wasn’t likely to answer very many questions, Naruto shrugged and decided that he might as well take a look around to see if he could at least get a bearing on his location. Any direction was as good as another so he simply headed straight forwards where he happened to be facing, tramping through the grass and using his hands to push overhanging branches away from his path. His heart wasn’t truly in the mood for exploration, distracted with worry for his friends, but he couldn’t help them until he found a way back and for now that meant moving forward. Beads of dew gathered at his fingertips and drips of water fell gently in his hair but Naruto ignored both in favor of keeping his eyes peeled for any sign of movement.

Instead of movement, he was attracted first by a loud voice shouting somewhere up ahead.

“CANNON BALL!”

Naruto perked up even as he ducked his head down, leaping in to the trees and putting on a burst of speed. He hurried forward until the sounds of splashing water and laughter met his ears and then slowed until he was watching his step between every jump from branch to branch. Eventually he came to the edge of a small lake and hid behind a thick bough of leaves to watch several children splash about in the water. When he saw them he had to rub his eyes and blink rapidly just to be sure that he wasn’t hallucinating, going so far as to quietly attempt to dispel any possible genjutsu.

All of them had brilliant red hair the exact same shade his mother had when he met her inside his mindscape. Tomato, she said her classmates had called her, and indeed the children down below looked like tomatoes bobbing in the lake, especially the two boys with their shorts haircuts. The only people he had ever known to have that distinctive red shade of hair were those of Uzumaki descent like Karin or Nagato. Even Gaara had traces of Uzumaki ancestry, as they had discovered only a few years ago. His friend had been shy but pleased to tell him and Naruto would openly admit to having cried with sheer joy. Knowing he had _any_ family, no matter how distant, it was the greatest moment in his life barring the days his children had been born. Now here he was looking at three little ones who could easily have passed for full-blooded Uzumaki.

What the hell was this place?

Inching forward, he leaned just the slightest bit to one side and tried to scan the area for clues about which direction the kids had come from. Was there a settlement nearby? Hopefully they would be friendly and he could ask directions and maybe ask enough subtle questions to figure out if he was even still in the same universe.

A small part of his mind which sounded suspiciously like Sakura laughed at the idea of him being subtle about anything but Naruto managed to ignore it and keep looking.

Except, when he looked back down at the lake there were only two children there now. Strange. Somehow the girl had managed to slip away right under his nose and he hadn’t even bothered to notice. Naruto frowned but brightened immediately afterwards. Maybe she’d gone to get her things and go back to their home. If that was the case then he could follow her and do a little reconnaissance like Kakashi-sensei taught him to.

“Well, well, well. What do we have here?”

Yelping with fright, Naruto jerked around to see that the little girl had not, in fact, left for home. She was standing right behind him with her hands on both hips and a disapproving frown on her face, hair and clothing both dripping at her feet. Chakra that almost seemed familiar brushed against his very briefly before he had a chance to say anything.

“Oh.” Her frown melted away, replaced with a brilliant smile. “Sorry about that! You don’t _look_ like an Uzumaki but you’ve got our chakra for sure!”

“Eh!? How do you know?”

“All of us have really similar chakra, duh.”

“Well _excuse me_ for not having any other Uzumaki around to figure that out!”

Naruto glared at her for making him feel dumb. He’d never been very good at sensing chakra anyway. Kurama’s chakra had always blotted everything else out when he was younger and then once he learned to control it there was still no one like him around. Karin had instantly rebuffed his invitations to be a citizen of Konoha and Gaara had his own village to run.

The little girl tilted her head at him in confusion. He would have put her at about six years old, nowhere near the age when she should have been confronting strange adults in the forest with no one else around to help her if things turned ugly. Naruto opened his mouth to say something about that and then stopped as his brain finally caught up with her words.

“Wait, you’re an Uzumaki!?” he demanded. She nodded proudly.

“Of course I am. We all are.” Naruto stared.

“You all are,” he repeated faintly. ‘All’ meant there were more than just the three of them. ‘All’ implied a group. His heart thundered in his chest and it took all of his self-control not to grab her by the arms and shake some answers out of her. “Show me!”

“Sure thing! Right this way, dattebane!”

His entire body twitched but his quiet, “What did you just say?” was lost to the wind as the little girl hurled herself off the branch they were standing on and he had to scramble to follow her to the next tree.

As they made their way around the edge of the lake the girl hollered at her two companions that she was going back to the village, setting Naruto’s mind awhirl. There was a whole _village_ of Uzumaki! Was it possible that there had been survivors when Uzushio had been destroyed?

Their journey was even shorter than he thought it would be, a mere ten minutes before the trees parted like the sudden breaking of an illusion and between one moment and the next there was a village before his eyes. It was breathtaking, elegant in its perfect immersion with nature. Houses were built in to hills or outcroppings of rock, naturally embellished with strategically planted flowers and bushes. No roadways existed but for the paths worn down by countless feet and numerous bridges connecting the treetops. All around the village there were visible signs of frequent flooding and Naruto marveled at the tenacity of a people who would choose to stay and thrive under such conditions.

While he was busy letting his eyes fall out with admiration his young guide swept one arm out to encompass all they saw before them.

“Pretty nice, huh? Since you’re an Uzumaki – obviously – then you belong here. So welcome home to Uzushio!”

“To _what_!?” Naruto’s head snapped around, certain that he must have misheard.

“Uzushiogakure, dummy. Don’t you listen?”

Getting sassed by a six year old wasn’t really on his list of things to do today but Naruto ignored that in favor of scowling in defiance. She had to be wrong, of course. No way was this the real Uzushio.

“You’re pulling my leg right? Uzushio was destroyed long before I was even born. Did you guys build again somewhere or something?”

“Destroyed!? Are you crazy!? Whirlpool Island is impenetrable and who the hell would want to wipe us out anyway?” The little girl shook her head, spraying water droplets everywhere and she gave him a look that said her opinion of his intelligence was dropping by the minute. Naruto was forced to follow when she leapt down from her tree and set a course between the cleverly hidden houses.

“Uh, I think it was Kiri,” he muttered, trying to remember his history classes from way back in his academy days. But it had been a long time and he’d never paid all that much attention back then anyway. No more details came to mind.

“Huh. I guess Kiri doesn’t really like us all that much, you’re right. But no way could they ever wipe us out! We’re super strong, dattebane!”

Naruto stumbled. That word, that verbal tick so very close to his own. Could it be just a thing that all members of the Uzumaki clan did subconsciously? Unfortunately he had no chance to ask because as soon as he regained his balance and caught up to her she had reached her destination and was being greeted by a trio of women. All of them sported the brilliant red hair of their clan and faces so closely identical he would have thought them clones if they hadn’t been wearing different clothes.

“And who is this that you’ve brought to us, child?” the woman in the center asked, her eyes scanning Naruto from head to toe. There was something curious about the look in her eyes despite the incredible poise with which she held herself.

“Dunno. I didn’t ask his name. But he’s an Uzumaki, I checked! So he belongs here too!” The girl offered an unrepentant grin in the face of a judgmental look.

“What is your name, shinobi?”

“Uzumaki Naruto! Uh…where am I?”

“I already _told you_!”

Naruto fought the urge to stick his tongue out at her. He was thirty-four years old, damn it. Both of his children were older than her. Regressing back to his own childish habits certainly wasn’t going to help him impress any answers out of these hoity-toity prissy-faces who seemed to be authority figures. A shudder ran through him when all three of them raised the same eyebrow at the same time.

“As an Uzumaki you doubt your own homeland?” one of them asked.

He didn’t really have a way to refute that other than to admit that he’d never been here before to get to know the place. And since that much was pretty obvious already he opted to do nothing but shrug.

“Where do you come from, Uzumaki Naruto?” The woman on the right asked him. Her hair had tiny braids woven through with very fine silver chains and it gave her the look of a crowned noble lady.

“Konoha, of course!”

“Ah. It was my belief that the Lady Mito was the only Uzumaki remaining in your village. We offer our condolences for her loss.”

“Her…loss?”

“The nine-tailed beast. His chakra is only too obvious within your own and, as all know, a jinchūriki does not survive the extraction of their ward. If you are the new bearer then it is obvious that the Lady Mito has left this world. We mourn the loss of such a paramount woman.”

Naruto nodded slowly and wondered what the hell she was talking about. The name Mito tugged at some very old memory but he couldn’t for the life of him think of where he had heard it before. Apparently she’d been Kurama’s jinchūriki at some point and he would have asked his friend about it if he couldn’t sense Kurama is the midst of a massive sulk. Best not to disturb him right then.

“Your chakras are so perfectly melded; I marvel at your skill.” His attention was drawn back to the woman in the middle. “You must be a very powerful shinobi indeed to have tamed the beast so well.”

“I’m the Hokage, dattebayo!”

As soon as he said it he could feel tension in the air that he hadn’t even noticed had melted away until suddenly it was back.

“We had not realized that Konoha had chosen a fourth Hokage so soon after the appointment of Hiruzen-sama.” All three ladies tilted their heads, the little girl beside them imitating the motion a single second off-beat. Naruto reached up to scratch his head in confusion. Had all of these people been buried under a rock somewhere?

“Fourth? The fourth was my dad. I’m the seventh Hokage, duh.” With a twist he showed them the back of his specially made haori.

“Seventh?”

Naruto gulped and took a step back. He hadn’t seen a frown that forbidding since the last time Yamato-taichou had to use his scary face to frighten a few boisterous genin off of his front lawn. What the hell had he done to earn a look like that?

Between one moment and the next all of his senses began to scream at him. Kakashi-sensei could probably have explained exactly what he was feeling but all Naruto knew was that suddenly these women did _not_ like him. Their eyes on him had that same feeling of suspicion and disdain which had followed him throughout his earliest childhood, before the adults of the village slowly learned to see him as more than just the demon container.

When one of the women shifted their stance he shifted his own as well, tracking her movements, ready to spring in to action. Hopefully he would be able to get that little girl away from them, maybe use a clone to move her to a safer place if this turned in to a fight.

“You think you can walk in to our village and fool us with such blatant lies? Insult. Slander. Treachery. You may possess Uzumaki lineage but you have just as obviously squandered it. Do not expect your blood to grant you mercy, _Uzumaki Naruto_.” The lady on the left reached for one of her hair pieces as Naruto continued to frown in confusion.

“I didn’t tell any lies!” he insisted. “I’m the seventh Hokage, ‘ttebayo! You’re the crazy ones!”

“Us!?” The little girl finally piped up again just to give him an incredulous look. “You thought Kiri had destroyed Uzushio! _You’re_ crazy!”

Okay, Naruto thought to himself, maybe he wouldn’t bother to protect her if she was going to side with these bozo idiots. He sneered back at her mockingly as the lady who threatened him laid a restraining hand on the girl’s shoulder.

“That is enough, Kushina,” the woman snapped. Naruto froze.

“What did you call her?” he breathed.

“My name is Uzumaki Kushina, dattebane! And don’t you forget it!”

His body felt cold and hot at the same time. Several things fell in to place all at the same time and, while Naruto was well aware that he had never been the smartest person that ever lived, he had enough experience with the world now to put two and three together to make five. Still, the theory that had just entered his brain right then might have been the craziest he had ever come up with.

With wide eyes and shaking limbs, he tilted his head to get a better look at the girl peeking out at him with a determined face and more fire than a red hot habanero pepper.

“Mom?”


	2. Chapter 2

Four days had passed and still Naruto could not keep his eyes off of her for more than a few minutes at a time. Even as everyone else seemed to swallow his explanation of time travel with suspicious ease, he could hardly believe it himself. This little girl with the too wide grin and the always tangled hair was his mother – _his mother_! And she was only six years old!

Whatever that weird scroll had been for he didn’t know but it had apparently tossed him several decades back in time. Which was, in his educated opinion, extremely cool.

Kushina opened one eye to peek at him from where she was perched on a boulder, legs folded and fingers pressed together in a hand sign meant to stabilize her chakra and help her meditate. All Uzumaki began chakra training incredibly early, apparently, and even the appearance of her future son had not stopped Kushina’s teacher from insisting that she complete her daily exercises. Naruto was allowed to accompany her only if he agreed not to be a disturbance.

He would be very quick to protest that he was not being a disturbance in the slightest bit, should there have been anyone around to scold him. Luckily there wasn’t and he felt no guilt over his failure to reprimand her about being so obvious in her lack of attention to her assigned task. In fact, he was rather enjoying having her attention on him. Kushina had been the hardest to convince that his story wasn’t a complete and utter crock made up by some crazy madman. Once she had finally accepted that what he was saying was the truth things had been rather strange between them.

Naruto understood that he was expecting things from her that she just couldn’t give but he couldn’t help himself. The one and only time he had ever met his mother she had been a chakra impression left inside his own mind, aware of the events of the past, witness to his memories and everything he had ever gone through. She had been an adult woman. She had been his _mother_.

The girl before him now was not his mother – at least, not yet. Right now she was just a little girl who could barely imagine kissing a boy let alone comprehend what it meant to be a parent, to love a baby of her own. Kushina was an only child, an orphan just like him, although she had been raised by her village as a beloved member of the clan rather than treated as an unwanted outcast, but it was enough of a connection for them to have something to talk about at least. He counted himself lucky that she seemed more interested in him than put off once she finally came around to the idea.

Deep blue eyes peeked at him yet again, snapping shut when she saw him looking back at her. Naruto smiled and yawned exaggeratedly, stretching his arms above his head, then he tucked himself back in to the roots he had repurposed for a backrest and twiddled his fingers together with an open smile. Only four days they had known each other but he already knew how to play Kushina like a fiddle.

It took precisely three minutes of seeing him look so carefree and at ease for her restrain to fold under the pressure of her own immutable curiosity.

“What do you look so happy for,” she demanded, prompting him to hide a chuckle. He had learned fairly quickly that she despised feeling left out of something and wasn’t shy about bulling her way in to demand answers or be included in the joke.

“Nothing,” he replied lazily. “I’m just in a good mood today. Are you done yet?” She wasn’t. These exercises were supposed to last for at least another hour. But if she wasn’t going to give them her full concentration then they weren’t going to do her any good anyway. Or, at least, that was how he justified his actions inside his own head.

“Yup, totally done! What should we do now?” Kushina unfolded her legs and let them flop down over the face of the boulder, kicking her heels against the rocky surface while Naruto gave that some thought.

“Maybe we could study something together? Shizuko-sama gave you that book on seals and stuff, right?”

He watched, enraptured, as Kushina broke out in to a smile. “I can’t believe you’re so old and you don’t know _anything_ about fūinjutsu!”

“I’m not old,” he protested.

She ignored him and hopped down from her perch to lead them back towards the village. Unable to maintain the pretense of being offended, Naruto happily trotted along behind her, even swept her up to ride on his shoulders for the journey.

Deep down inside of him, he still wanted her to look at him as a mother should. He wanted her to be the one to hold him in her arms and reassure him that everything was going to be okay. The child inside of him who hadn’t known love until he was almost grown wanted nothing more than to lay his head in her lap and cry for all the years lost between them.

Those parts of himself were very firmly tucked down in to one corner and locked away. It would be unfair of him to put those things on her shoulders. Of course it was unfair that he had been deprived of his mother for his entire life but those were the cards he’d been dealt and he had made his peace with that many years ago. Now it was up to him to roll with the punches and be the adult, no matter what he truly wished for.

He _was_ grateful for the chances he had been given though. To have time with his mother, any time at all, it was a gift more precious than he could ever have hoped for. Kushina was such a bright child and so beautiful it made his heart ache. She had so much in her that reminded him of his own daughter and, strangely, that made it easier to treat her like a child rather than the adult she would someday grow up to be. Six years old was an adorable age for pretty much any kid. Letting her ride on his shoulders and hearing the sweet sound of her laughter was far from a hardship.

“Faster, Naruto-kun! Run faster!”

“Alright, hold on!”

Laughter rang against the trees as Naruto gripped Kushina’s legs and hurled himself forward at a dead run. One would think having a life time of shinobi training would mean that he was completely steady on his feet but the fact was that the longer he spent in Uzushio the more he felt himself slipping backwards towards childhood habits. The two of them swayed and careened wildly from side to side, nearly tipping in to a bush here and almost tumbling down a ravine there, until finally they burst out of the tree line and his feet were pounding down the well-worn paths leading him through the village proper.

Shizuko, the woman who braided her hair with fine chains of silver and whom he had also learned happened to be the Uzukage, watched them fly past her with pinched lips and a shaking head. Most of the other citizens they ran past greeted them with amused smiles and enthusiastic waves. Naruto’s theory was that Shizuko had been given the job because she was the only one serious enough to do it. He had been delighted to discover that his ancestors were all pretty laid back, able to lash out with overwhelmingly deadly force one moment only to fall back in to laughter in the next.

For the first time in his life he felt as though he had found a place where he truly belonged that he hadn’t needed to _fight_ to belong to. As much as Konoha would always be his home, his past, his future, and everything that he dreamed of, it was a completely new experience to be accepted not for his heroic deeds but simply for himself.

Even his friendships had been hard earned. Naruto loved Sakura and Shikamaru and all the others but underneath that undying loyalty was the truth that they had made the choice to accept him. His fellow Uzumaki accepted him by right of birth, by right of his name, by simple inclusion of family with no questions asked. Everywhere he went he was greeted with smiles and introduced to more people. He made so many new friends that every night he went to sleep with more names to add on to his family tree. Konoha might be his home but Uzushio was his roots.

Their barely controlled run came a reluctant end when they reached the modest home Kushina lived in with the aunt who had been raising her since her parents died on a mission two years ago. She shared a room with her cousin, whom she emphatically referred to as a stinky faced dumb-dumb, and Naruto nearly exploded with happiness at seeing such normal every-day reactions to such normal family stuff.

Having cousins sounded like so much fun. If he ever made it back to his own time he was definitely sending another letter to Karin.

Since stinky face dumb-dumb wasn’t home at the moment they had a quiet bedroom all to themselves to hunker down over a thick tome containing a beginner’s knowledge of the sealing arts. Most of it was pretty confusing. He didn’t understand a lot of the why’s or how’s and neither did Kushina. She, at least, had the excuse of still being too young to be expected to understand it all. His excuse was not having any sort of fūinjutsu expert left in Konoha who could have taught him. The last person he had been aware of who could boast any sort of expertise had been the Pervy Sage and his body had long found its rest at the bottom of the waters surrounding Ame.

To his great surprise, however, the parts he did manage to struggle his way through were actually pretty interesting. It was amazing to see how many things you could do with seals. Creation, destruction, stasis, inertia, elemental control, the possibilities were endless. Just the thought of so many cool new jutsu kept his head lowered in to the book right alongside Kushina’s, soaking up every word he could force his mind to retain.

At long last his practice dealing with mountains of paperwork day in and day out finally had a good use. Studying something cool had nothing on reading seventeen reports in a row on grain yields. Several times over the year since he had taken the Hokage’s hat he’d entertained fantasies of using paperwork as a new form of torture to get his prisoners to talk. If it didn’t work then at least in the end he’d gotten some free labor. Shikamaru had never gone for the idea but Naruto thought it was unappreciated genius.

Noon came and went, studying briefly interrupted in favor of mixing up some homemade ramen. Discovering that his mother before him shared his love of ramen had been like discovering the origins of his own religion. After worshipping three bowls each they returned to their studies but hardly another hour had gone by before they were interrupted.

Both of them had ignored the knock at the door once they heard footsteps signaling that Kushina’s aunt was answering it. When the woman popped her head in to the room, however, it was to inform them that their guest had actually come to summon Naruto.

“Shizuko-baa-chan wants to speak to _me_?” he said. Kushina tittered while her aunt covered her mouth in an amused manner.

“You mustn’t refer to her like that,” she scolded half-heartedly. Naruto gave her a wink before laying one hand on the top of Kushina’s head to ruffle her hair. She squirmed out from under his touch with an offended squawk and marched back over to where she had left her book, sinking down to the floor and very pointedly returning to her attempts to draw a basic seal base.

Although he would have much rather stayed here, or even taken Kushina with him, Naruto sucked it up and went to answer the Uzukage’s summon. She was probably in her office a mere five minute walk away so it wasn’t as though he was going very far. He could hurry back after and hopefully make it in time to help advocate the benefits of having ramen for dinner as well. Twice daily ramen was good for the soul, no one would ever be able to convince him otherwise.

He found the village leader right where he’d thought he would: tucked in behind her obsessively tidy desk with an ink brush in one hand and the other rattling the beads of an abacas. She lifted her head when he walked in only to give him a look which told him to wait before returning to whatever figures she was trying to reckon. Naruto bounced on the toes of his feet, gazing around at the exotic sculptures on the wall. He’d never seen anything quite like the artwork unique to Uzushio and he wondered if any had survived the years of neglect back in his own time line.

Finally Shizuko deigned to set aside her accounts and beckoned him towards one of the chairs across from her, which he settled in to gratefully.

“I’m sure you know why I asked you to come,” she said. Naruto did manage to stop himself from imitating her stern face but he did not manage to stop his natural urge to turn her words around mockingly.

“I’m sure I have no idea.” This place really was turning him in to a child. Shizuko pinched her lips together.

“Your time travel, young man. There are things we must discuss about your unauthorized trip through the time channels put in to place for dire emergencies. As much as I appreciate the personal nature of your circumstances, that was not a true emergency. You should not have come here. You must return home.”

Naruto’s mind reeled away from her words on first impact, barely able to scratch the surface of those implications, and focused on the one answer he could give with any sort of certainty. “I’m thirty-four, ‘ttebayo. Quit calling me a child.”

“As you have never gone through the Uzumaki rite of passage, you are a child in my eyes.”

“Uh…yeah. The rite. Okay. Can we back up to the thing about the stuff with something about time channels? What the hell is that all about?”

“Uzumaki Naruto are you telling me that you travelled through a time channel without even knowing what it was?”

“Yes?”

“The more I learn about you, young man, the more I dislike you.”

Naruto grinned and winked at the deceptively young looking woman before him. “Believe me, the feeling is entirely mutual. Now get to the explaining already!” She shot him a glare before composing herself and leaning back in her seat with an even more serious expression than usual.

“Kushina tells me you lack even the most basic knowledge of fūinjutsu so I suppose this comes as no surprise. Very well, we shall start from the beginning. The Uzumaki clan have been studying the sealing arts for generations; we can accomplish things with our seals that other villages can only dream of and our skills are highly sought after. Much of what we can do is known only through legend and conjecture. One such skill is the ability to travel through time.”

“I guess I’m with you so far. You guys have awesome skills and other people want them. Got it.”

“Your ability to water down my explanations to below even a child’s level is fascinating, I assure you. One of the reasons that we keep the secret of time travel so hidden is obvious: that power in the wrong hands would mean destruction on an unimaginable scale. However, the other is less known: whether or not one is successful at passing through the channels is entirely dependent on who crafted the original seal. I am absolutely disgusted by the sheer dumb luck which led you to interacting with a scroll drawn by one of your own direct ancestors.”

Completely free of any guilt – dumb luck was kind of his thing, to be honest – Naruto shrugged. “Why does it matter who drew the seal?”

“What guides a person through the time channels is the call of blood. You must have a direct blood relation to guide you or else you are hurtling yourself in to time with no control over where you will end up.”

“Oh.” A shudder wracked him. “Scary.”

“Indeed.”

“So what’s the point then? Are you saying…I can’t ever go home?”

“Nonsense. You have blood relatives left in your proper time, do you not?”

Images of his children flashed before his eyes, their first steps and the way they smiled. The letters from Gaara he kept in a special drawer in his office at home. Memories of the way Karin had almost looked back the last time he saw her, that one miniscule sign of hesitance which kept his hope alive that someday she might want to be family.

“Yeah,” he replied eventually. “Yeah I do.”

“Then the solution is simple. You must create the seal yourself and use your familial connection to guide you back to where and when you are supposed to be.”

“Well it sounds easy when you say it like that but, like you already said, I don’t know anything about fūinjutsu.”

“A solution can be found for that as well. We shall just have to teach you.”

Naruto stuck out his lower lip and raised both eyebrows with an expression of mild doubt. Thirty-four years of living with this brain had given him a realistic view of what abilities he did and did not possess. Maybe he could learn sealing. Maybe. If whoever his teacher was didn’t get too technical or anything. But he was fairly sure that Shizuko was underestimating just how easy this task was going to be.

It looked as though he might be stuck here for years. And he wasn’t sure if he was excited or disappointed by that possibility.


	3. Chapter 3

Kushina’s teacher in the sealing and shinobi arts was Shizuko herself. According to her no one had ever explained why she was given the honor of studying with the most skilled member of their clan but then, Kushina was pretty young, she’d probably never really thought to ask before.

Once it became clear that Naruto was unable to pay any attention to his own studies when separated from Kushina for large portions of every day, Shizuko very reluctantly agreed to take him on as a student as well. Theirs was a student/teacher relationship devoid of any respect on either side and it was hard to say who set the worse example for Kushina when it came to their childish little spats.

Surprisingly, however, Naruto was actually picking things up a lot faster than he’d thought he might. It took over a week before Shizuko thought to ask him what his personal learning style was, begrudgingly of course, but she did make an effort to change her teaching style to accommodate him, which he was forced to appreciate, also begrudgingly. Things went a lot smoother after she stopped trying to force him to memorize the theory behind everything. He didn’t care why it worked or how, just that it did work in the end.

He did concede to leaving at least one clone behind each day to read through one of the endless instructional tomes kept within the Hidden Library of Uzushio. Just being allowed inside was a big deal apparently but it was an honor he wished had never been bestowed upon him. Reading was boring.

Training, on the other hand, was as much fun as it had always been. Even more so now that he got to train with his own mother. Kushina threw herself in to every new task with the same enthusiasm he remembered having when he was that age. When she fell she stood back up. When she failed she tried again. When she bled she bandaged the wound and wiped her own tears. She was so strong already and watching her made his chest feel tight with emotions he couldn’t properly unravel. Was it strange that he wanted this little girl to never grow up? If she didn’t grew up then he would never be born, he knew that, but there were short moments as he watched her smile when he thought that it kind of sounded like a fair trade.

If she never grew up then she would never go through the things he knew lay in her future.

Still, he had lots of time to work through these strange, conflicting feelings. It had been a month since he had fallen back through the past and he was still only barely at a novice level despite throwing himself almost entirely into learning fūinjutsu. Nearly every waking hour was spent in some sort of training. Even in his off hours when he followed Kushina around the rain-drenched forests, letting her show him every last corner of the island, he still left clones tucked in to random places to continue their attempts at drawing the correct bases or memorizing which combination of kanji would results in different kinds of effects.

He couldn’t do very much with it yet but the non-stop study had quickly paid off in small ways. Kushina pouted when she realized that he had outstripped her already in under a month and it took three piggy back rides before she magnanimously forgave him. Now it seemed as though her competitive spirit had been awakened and she insisted on training just as hard as him.

Of course, she couldn’t produce any clones so her efforts weren’t half as effective as his, but neither he nor their stern-faced teacher saw fit to mention that to her. Kushina forged on with her cute face full of determination and Naruto did his best to hide the welling tears every time he looked at her and saw himself.

Today was supposed to be a rest day. In fact, it was a festival day celebrating the founding of their hidden village and the incredible woman who had first led their people here. Uzushio, apparently, had always been a matriarchy. Naruto thought that was pretty cool; he thought Sakura would have loved it here. Most of the citizens had left their homes and made their way down to the beaches for the traditional celebration in which they would reenact their ancestors coming ashore for the first time.

Although he was attending the celebration just the same as everyone else, happily seated with Kushina under the noontime clouds and listening to her half-gibberish account of the history behind the festival, a strange kind of restlessness stopped Naruto from being able to sink in to the festivities as he normally would. Something foreboding seemed to hang in the air and it left him feeling antsy enough that he sent out a clone not for training but simply to walk the borders of the village for his own peace of mind. Knowing that a copy of himself was making the rounds even though there wasn’t anything to watch out for gave him enough peace of mind to relax, throwing an arm over Kushina’s shoulders and tucking her up against his side.

Neither of them paid quite as much attention to the reenactment as they were supposed to, choosing instead to tucks their heads close together and make each other giggle with silly comments. Kushina laughed at how funny some of the elders looked trying to struggle against the waves while Naruto egged her on by pointing out the young man who had just tripped over his own feet and fallen face down in to the sand.

People around them sent them reprimanding looks layered in hidden amusement, like an entire village of parents telling their children to behave better whilst trying not to laugh themselves. Naruto and Kushina ignored all of them.

Many of the elders were still in the water, slowly making their way towards shore as a representation of the last people to immigrate to the Land of Whirlpools, when Naruto felt his clone release and return its memories to him. He relived the experience of aimless wandering and the decision to calm himself by meditating in sage mode. Then his eyes shot open as he remembered the sensation of dozens upon dozens of hostile chakra signatures bearing down upon them from the opposite side of the island.

“Naruto-kun? Where are you going?” Kushina asked when he jerked to his feet.

“Stay here,” he barked.

Loose sand sprayed up from under his feet as he flew down the sloping beach toward Shizuko, ankle deep in the water to welcome her ‘new citizens.’ Some of the people he ran by chuckled and called to him that he was running in the wrong direction and he couldn’t help but think that they were right. Shizuko lifted a brow at him in question as he hurled himself around in front of her.

“You are disturbing–”

“There’s someone coming! Nearly a hundred chakra signatures coming this way from the other side of the island!” He blurted his words right over top of hers, unable to even enjoy the way her regal detachment slid away with the widening of her eyes.

“How do you know?” she demanded.

“Sage mode. No time! They’re already almost here!”

Without waiting for her to react, Naruto turned and bolted in the opposite direction. Kushina caught his gaze as he pushed off the ground with a burst of chakra, launching himself over the heads of the entire gathering, and he saw in her eyes that she knew something was wrong. He could only pray that she would stay out of trouble with the rest of the young ones.

Behind him he could hear Shizuko’s voice rising above the crowd but he was already too far away to hear what it was she was saying. Time was precious. It had already been a few minutes since his clone sensed the approaching army – because it could only be an aggressive force who would appear in such numbers – and the island was but a small thing. He wondered if they had known of the festival Uzushio would be holding today. Had they planned this, to attack when all of the villagers would have their guards lowered? Cowards.

The clone’s memories had told him how many there were but not how strong or who they could be. Still, he’d gone up against worse odds before and come out alive on the other side.  Naruto didn’t bother to slow his steps but plowed onwards towards the direction he’d felt the intruders coming from.  Jumping right in to the thick of things was kind of his signature move, after all.

As soon as he spotted the first stranger, obvious without the distinctive red hair, Naruto did what he did best. Punch first and ask questions later. Right away he had three more trying to get the jump on him, all from different angles. A well-aimed kick rendered the first unconscious before he left behind a pair of clones to take care of the other two and hurried onward with even more worry settling in his gut. Those men had all been wearing distinctive headbands which could only lead him to one conclusion.

Kiri had come.

Naruto might not have paid enough attention in school to remember the details but he did know that Kiri was behind the destruction of his mother’s home village and the failure to come to their aid was one of Konoha’s deepest shames, even to this day. With his brows knitting together, he scowled in determination. Kiri had won last time because the citizens hadn’t expected their attack, dead almost before they knew something was amiss, but not this time. This time he was here to defend them. And he wasn’t about to let anything happen to one happy little girl who had given him her smile and indomitable will. His mother would have the childhood she deserved if he had to punch every last one of these bastards in the face himself.

Once he’d made that silent vow, of course, that was when he ran in to the main force instead of just the scouts. Close to four score Kiri soldiers all paused in unison as their silent approach was interrupted by once very angry looking man with messy blond hair and no obvious weapons. If he were back in his own time these idiots might have turned and run on first sight; it wouldn’t be the first time he’d avoided a fight by reputation alone. But right now he was decades before the time of his own birth and these men knew absolutely nothing about him – to their detriment. Naruto let his scowl rapidly fade in to an excited grin. It had been a long time since he’d had a chance to really let loose.

“Sneaking around in the woods, eh?” Some of the gathered shinobi twitched at being addressed so openly. 

“It’s just one idiot,” he heard someone grumble. “And he doesn’t even look like an Uzumaki. Someone cut him down and let’s keep moving.”

“First mistake,” Naruto smirked.

It took a single hand sign to create enough clones to hem in the entire group before him. Very likely there were others out there who he’d missed but the villagers had been warned and they could deal with any stragglers. Hell, they could have dealt with this entire group by themselves provided enough warning but Naruto wasn’t exactly the type to sit back and watch other people do all the dirty work.

His clones moved in without hesitation, needing no prompting, and the original Naruto leaping to action at the same time. After spending so much time behind a desk doing nothing but paperwork followed by a month of little else but what amounted to paper training, it felt amazing to do something truly physical for a change. Naruto didn’t bother to hold back his wild whoop of satisfaction as he crashed his fist in to some Kiri shinobi’s nose, enjoying the crunch of broken bone before whirling and slamming his heel in to someone else’s sternum.

Four more went down before he realized the minor mistake he’d made. With his clones as spaced out as they were he’d left himself vulnerable to getting overwhelmed by sheer enemy numbers. He could have made more clones but there was little enough space as it was and he’d risk any of their attacks hitting himself.

Which left him with one option – the fun one. Something of his excitement must have shown on his face as the woman facing him at the moment hesitated briefly before rallying and lunging towards him with her naginata. Between dodging to one side and slapping her blade away Naruto reached deep inside himself to where he could feel Kurama shifting restlessly, receiving the chakra already welling up in preparation. The next instant his entire body was limned in golden flame, his awareness of the world increased, and the expressions on the faces of those who could see him filled with terrified awe.

“Come and get it, dattebayo!”

Fighting was so much easier when he could make extra limbs as needed. Punching in four directions at once always tended to put his enemies off for some reason and Naruto shamelessly used their confusion against them. He didn’t really have any solid plan other than to hope that at least most of them would be forced to stay here and face him, thereby minimizing the possible damage to the village. Whether or not it was stupid to jump in without a plan it seemed to be working at least, as he could tell from the occasional influx of memories whenever one of his clones was taken down. He absorbed and compartmentalized their memories like always while keeping most of his focus on the fight in front of his real self.

Maybe a quarter of the Kiri shinobi were groaning on the ground or unconscious by the time reinforcements arrived from Uzushio. Naruto spun the man currently in his grip a full 360 degrees before heaving him back in to the chaos, his little twirl having given himself a chance to see how many had arrived to fight. At least a dozen had come, which in his opinion was more than enough. The Uzumaki clan was bad ass.

They were not, however, the greatest babysitters in the world, apparently. With a woman four inches taller than him taking up most of his concentration, Naruto wasn’t sure what it was that made him look to the side but he was grateful for whatever instinct it was. He wasn’t fast enough to stop Kushina, hidden away high up in a tree, from tossing the kunai she must have lifted off one of her elders, but he was at least fast enough to intercept the brute who spotted her and moved to retaliate. Protective rage encompassed him so fast that Naruto barely even noticed that he was now encased in his Kyuubi form until massive spectral jaws clamped down on the man he had in his sights, crushing him and tearing him bodily in half all in a single blow.

Kushina gave a little squeak of surprise when he pulled her off her branch and in to his arms. Floating within the shape of Kurama’s head, Naruto held her close to his chest even as he turned the great beast keeping them safe and reached out with Kurama’s arms to thrash the bodies around them – being careful not to hit anyone with red hair, of course.

Yet, as violent and protective as he was feeling, it was nothing compared to the savagery going on below. It was difficult to see where flowing red hair ended and sticky red blood began. Screams filled the air as the shinobi of Uzushio rose up to defend their homes, showing no mercy to the ones who had come to destroy them. Naruto did his best to shield Kushina’s eyes even as he knew the futility of his own actions. Someday this little girl would grow up to become a fearsome shinobi with the power to level entire battlefields just as he did, whether by her own strength or by borrowing from the beast she would carry within her. He didn’t think anyone would blame him for trying to put that off for as long as possible, although Kushina herself was making it a bit difficult with the way she kept trying to peek around the fingers blocking her view. 

The rest of the battle wasn’t really much of a ‘battle’, per se. It would have been more appropriate to call it a slaughter. Considering what Naruto knew of history and what the Kiri forces’ intentions, he couldn’t find it in himself to dredge up more than a small pool of regret. Ending a human life should never be done lightly – his own style usually relied heavily on incapacitating rather than killing – but these soldiers had come to wipe out an entire village, an entire people. They kind of brought it on themselves.

As the massive front paws of his Kyuubi form pressed another Kiri shinobi in to the earth, Naruto glanced around to judge the situation. Most of the fighting had been pressed back, moving in the opposite direction from the village, leaving only a handful in the wooded area near him, each of them engaged and being pressed hard by furious Uzumaki. It seemed like his clan mates had everything under control, enough so that he felt safe releasing Kurama’s chakra and dropping lightly to the ground, catching Kushina as she fell with him. He rolled his eyes as she immediately began to squirm and held her tighter.

“I could have helped, ‘ttebane!”

“No,” he told her gently as he pulled her towards home. “The great thing about having a family and a village is being able to keep living your childhood for as long as possible. Can you understand that Kushina-chan?”

“That’s just grown-up talk for calling me too young! I’m not too young! I’m strong!”

Coming to a stop in an empty clearing, Naruto finally released the little girl who would someday grow up to be his mother, spinning her around and kneeling down to take both of her hands in his own.

“Yes, you are,” he said sharply. “You are strong, that’s too true too, but you are _definitely_ too young; too young for me to lose you. _I_ was too young to lose _you_. Ugh, this is all so messed up!” Naruto shook his head, trying to force his thoughts in to some semblance or coherency. “Look, I know you’re only six and it doesn’t mean the same thing to you as it does to me, I get that it’s hard to wrap your head around, but you’re my mom and I’ve had to live my entire life without you. And it sucked, okay? It really sucked. But now I have this really amazing chance to get to know you for the first time so if I see you in danger I’m _gonna_ pull you out, I’m _gonna_ protect you. Because we’re family and family take care of each other, ‘ttebayo!”

Kushina stared at him for a long time with her blue eyes stretched wide in shock. Her lower lip wobbled once, twice, and then Naruto was waving his hands around anxiously as tears began to fall from her eyes.

“Hey, hey! What’s with the tears!? I didn’t want you to cry!”

“Family, huh?” she murmured quietly.

“Well, yeah. Of course!”

“Okay. I guess it’s alright for you to protect me if we’re family. But I’m still really strong!”

Naruto offered her his biggest smile. “The strongest,” he agreed.

She mirrored his smile back at him and he marveled yet again at seeing so much of himself in someone else. It was so similar and yet so different from looking at his own children, his mind never able to quite let go of the fact that he would be born of this girl rather than the other way around.

When he could see her finally growing restless under his dopey grin, Naruto allowed the moment between them to break. Instead he rose to his feet and swung Kushina up on to his back while laughing at her squeals of surprise. There were no more protests as he set off once more to make sure there were no issues defending the villages from any Kiri soldiers who might have made it past him.

And if Kushina held her arms around his neck just a little bit tighter than usual, neither of them saw fit to mention it.


	4. Chapter 4

Shizuko found him an hour later, still plastered to Kushina’s side. The Uzukage came to find him herself rather than sending someone to fetch him, which was rather surprising, and her face was more serious than its usual pinched expression. Naruto followed her back to her surprisingly spacious office, built in to the same rocky knoll from which she addressed the public whenever necessary. Kushina trotted at his heels with a smug smile for being included.

Once they were all tucked away in the office, however, it was obvious that she became bored rather quickly as the two adults immediately began to speak about ‘boring adult stuff’. They talked about casualties and village defenses, property damage and body disposal, funeral costs and the implications of war. All very important things but nothing that seemed cool or fun to a child who didn’t yet understand their true weight.

Until he was allowed to fall back in to it, Naruto hadn’t realized how much he missed his role as Hokage. After spending his entire life chasing the dream it had felt so good to finally achieve his goal. Then before he could blink he was here in the past and there had been too many things to adjust to for him to spare a thought for the responsibilities that came with running a village. It felt good to speak with Shizuko as one Kage to another; it felt like getting back to who he knew he was supposed to be. He couldn’t say he had slacked off in his efforts to find his way back home but Naruto had to admit that the longer he spent in Uzushio, the more reluctant he was to leave.

Just as it seemed Kushina was about to fall asleep in her chair, Shizuko finally got around to the point she had actually brought him here to talk about.

“Uzushio owes you a great debt. When you first arrived here you spoke of the destruction of our village; without your presence with us today those events would surely have come to pass yet again. However, this creates a new problem.”

“Huh?” Naruto scratched at his head. “What new problem?”

“I’m aware of how uneducated you are about the nature of fūinjutsu, let alone time travel and it’s wide ranging effects on the continuum, so I will keep this as simple as possible.”

“Good ‘cause you’re already losing me here.”

Shizuko gaze him a withering stare before continuing. “By stopping the destruction of our village you have impacted the events of your own history in a rather exceptional manner. It is imperative that we send you back to your own time as quickly as possible to avoid any further changes. We have no way of knowing whether the impact of your influence will be positive or negative. You _must_ go, and soon.”

Her words were like sharp pins callously popping the bubble he had allowed himself to sink in to over the past month. Of course he knew that he had to go home. When he left his entire home had been in danger, the lives of everyone he loved at risk, but over the past few weeks he hadn’t allowed the panic to get to him because he figured he could traipse back through the ‘time channels’ whenever he wanted and be right back where he started. It hadn’t occurred to him that it would ever matter how long he stayed or even why. As much as he knew he _had_ to go-

Looking to the side, Naruto met Kushina’s curious eyes. He didn’t _want_ to go. In his own time he had a wife and children and an entire village of people to take care of. But here, in the past, he had a mother.

“So, what then?” he asked eventually, dragging his eyes away from the redhead beside him to look at the one across instead. “We step up the training or something?”

“Actually, I’ve thought of a faster way but it will take time for the woman I have contacted to arrive here. You have one week to wrap up any business you have entangled yourself in here. If everything goes as planned you shall be gone seven days from now.”

“Seven days!?” Naruto’s jaw nearly unhinged it dropped so fast. “How am I supposed to learn how to use high-level sealing techniques in seven days!? Who did you contact, some super awesome master sage?”

Shizuko sniffed and waved him towards the door, a clear dismissal. “Of course not. I called upon an old friend of mine from another clan. Don’t fret too much about it.”

“You don’t really have any good reason for not telling me do you? I’m not a child whether I’ve gone through your rite of whatever or not and you told me everything else. You’re just being stingy now, aren’t you?” Naruto narrowed his eyes as her, grinning a little as he felt Kushina giggle in to his side. Shizuko huffed and turned up her nose and that was all the answer he needed to that.

Then a new thought occurred to him which hadn’t before and Naruto leaned forward, both hands planted on the Uzukage’s desk.

“Hey! If I changed the past then that means when I go back to the future then I’ll still have my mom right? Yeah! Yeah! Because I saved Uzushio and made everything different! Right?”

“Wrong.” One sharply spoken word from her froze him in place. “I’ve already told you: you understand nothing about the time channels or what it means to use them. What you did when you changed a major event was create an entirely separate timeline and when you return to when you came from you will be returning to your original timeline. Nothing will have changed in your world, just as we shall never know what would have been different in ours.”

“Oh.”

Naruto sank back down in to his chair feeling as though his entire body had been submerged in ice cold water, dreams he’d only just conceived of already swirling down the drain before he’d even had a chance to really reach for them. White noise filled his thoughts until all he was left with was a sense of loss and longing he thought he’d put behind him many years ago.

Small fingers slipped in to his own and he looked up to find Kushina staring back at him, more understanding in those eyes than any six year old should be capable of. No one so young should be able to look up at him with such sadness. He half thought she should be throwing a tantrum, screaming and crying about how unfair it all was. Or maybe that was just what he wanted to do despite knowing he was just a little too old for such antics.

But it was all so unfair! He’d fallen through time and fixed something bad! Shouldn’t he get some kind of reward for it all?

Leaning forward to bow his head down low, Naruto clutched at a fistful of hair with his free hand and gave himself a few moments to just breathe through it all. He wished he could think of a way to put his feelings in to words but they were just so jumbled up inside his chest that it all became one big ball of confusion he had no idea how to sort through.

“Damn,” was all he came up with eventually. “I don’t know what to say. Shikamaru would though. My friend, he’s a Nara and he’s really smart. He’d say something really brainy like…’all we are is dust in the wind’. I remember him saying that once.”

“What does it mean?” Kushina tugged on his fingers and gave him that look she always gave him when she thought he’d said something stupid. It brought a smile to his face for a moment as he admitted his own folly.

“I don’t know but it sounded cool when he said it.”

“It means,” Shizuko spoke up again at last, “that no matter what we do, nothing ever really matters. That our dreams and passions are as meaningless as the dust that floats upon the wind. You may chase after them as long as you like and in the end you will have accomplished nothing.” Naruto shuddered at the chill in her words, wondering if the Uzukage had ever had her own dreams shattered to speak so coldly.

“That’s _stupid_!”

Both of the adults startled and looked over to find Kushina rolling her eyes, taking back her hand so she could prop both of them on her hips with all the tiny irritation a kid her age could muster.

“You didn’t do nothing! You saved the whole village! Your mom – me – I’m already _gone_ where you come from so you don’t lose anything. Isn’t it good that this me from now gets to live? You did something! So _whatever_ to your stupid dust thing. If dust on the wind means it’s pointless then…then…then we _burn_ the dust!”

“Uh…burn it?” Naruto asked. Kushina flushed a little.

“I don’t know. I thought it would sound cooler.”

He stared at her for a long moment before bursting in to unrestrained laughter, truly not having expected any of that. Suddenly he had a lot more respect for Kakashi-sensei and all that poor man had to deal with when Team 7 were young little sprites feeding him exactly that same kind of nonsense. Yet he couldn’t deny that he felt oddly uplifted after her ridiculous little speech. She barely even knew what she was talking about, all she had to keep her going was a will to fight and the refusal to take a hit lying down, and Naruto wondered when he would stop being amazed at how much of himself he saw in her.

She was definitely right about one thing though. He had gotten some amazing gifts out of this experience, memories he would keep with him for the rest of his days. Even if nothing changed when he returned home nothing could ever take these moments away from him when he had laughed with his mother, cried with his mother, held her in his arms and loved her almost more than his heart knew how to.

“Alright.” Rubbing his right side as the laughter faded, Naruto threw his other arm over Kushina’s shoulders and pulled her in close. “We burn the dust,” he declared. “Whatever that means!”

Kushina laughed and leaned in to him and really that was all he could ask for.

-

Later, once they’d finally vacated Shizuko’s office as they’d been asked to and squirreled themselves away in one of the small coves ringing the island’s edges, she asked him a question he’d been waiting for – and dreading – since the day that he arrived here. She asked him about how she died.

Digging his toes in to the sand, Naruto tilted his head back to stare at the stars just starting to come out above them. Peeking out the corner of his eye, he could see Kushina watching him with her thumbnail caught between her teeth and her long hair pulled in all sorts of directions by the wind. He closed his eyes and breathed deeply before answering. Strange, how so many pains from so long ago kept opening after he thought they had already healed over.

Over the past month he had gone back and forth between so many different plans on how he was going to answer this question when she asked him but after the meeting in Shizuko’s office he had finally come to a solid decision. Even if it changed the course of events, even if he wasn’t supposed to, there was no way he could send his mother to her death a second time without any sort of warning. And that was supposing she even went to Konoha at all now that her home hadn’t been demolished, leaving her with nowhere to go. Hopefully the truth wouldn’t keep her away. Naruto couldn’t imagine a world in which his mom and dad didn’t get married; they belonged together!

“When Uzushio was destroyed,” he began in a steady voice, “you came to live in Konoha and after a few years you became the new jinchūriki of the nine-tailed fox, the one I have inside me right now. You married my dad and eventually you guys got pregnant with me. Only, it’s dangerous for a jinchūriki to get pregnant and there was someone that wanted to hurt my dad and the village.”

“But who?”

“Are you sure you want me to go in to everything? It gets kind of complicated.”

“Everything, Naruto-kun.”

She gave him a decisive nod and Naruto nodded slowly. Then he backed up and began with a story he had first heard from a woman with bright red hair who had helped him take the first steps towards taming the beast inside his belly. It was heavy stuff to put on someone so young, heavy enough that he was sure it would have scarred a civilian child of double her age for life. Kushina, however, was descended from shinobi and already begun her training to follow in those same footsteps, had snuck away from safety to witness a battle just that afternoon. As much as he wanted her to be able to enjoy her childhood for as long as she could it was sort of impossible for the children of warriors to enjoy the same innocence that the children of civilians did.

Things in the time she lived in were different from where he was from. In the Konoha Naruto presided over there were already many changes to the shinobi system that he’d begun to challenge. As he went through the complicated events leading up to his own mother’s death, a terribly laundry list of one system failure after another, example after example of the way that shinobi were raised only to be broken, Naruto could feel a fire rekindling in his gut which hadn’t burned so brightly since the day he put on his very first shinobi headband.

At the end of his tale Kushina remained silent, hugging her knees to her chest and watching the tumultuous waves crashing against the rocks below without really appearing the see them. Instead her eyes seemed distant, almost as though if she looked hard enough she could see in to her own future and witness the events of which she’d been told.

Rather than sit there in silence and let her work through her thoughts – although he knew that would probably have been the nicer thing to do – Naruto dealt with the awkward silence the same way he always had. He talked. With no clear theme in mind he yammered on about whatever came to mind first until he found himself stuck on the topic of his father. Naruto didn’t know anywhere near as much as he would have liked to about either of his parents but he knew enough to describe what he looked like and what kind of good man he was, how willingly he sacrificed himself for the good of the village. He talked about how strong Namikaze Minato was and how much the man had loved his wife and everyone around him.

“Stop.” Naruto’s jaw snapped shut at one quiet word from Kushina. He peeked at her a second time and found her sniffling but with a very small, wistful kind of smile. “He sounds really nice, so you can stop selling him now.”

“He’s not a horse,” Naruto chuckled weakly.

“Did he really love me? You promise?”

“More than anything in the whole world.” Reaching over, he chucked Kushina under the chin. “Except me of course. I’m pretty awesome, you know?”

Her smile widened and she smothered a giggle in her knees before scrambling to her feet and making her way to the edge of their little cove. When her bare toes stood just out of reach of the tumbling waves, she balled her fists and shook one of them at the sky as she hurled her surprisingly loud voice up towards the stars.

“I’m gonna marry Namikaze Minato and he’s gonna love me, dattebane!”

Naruto almost fell over backwards, unsure if he was shocked or amused.

“What are you doing?” he called over to her. When she spun around to look at him she was wearing such a look of determination he thought for a moment he’d seen a ghost, a woman grown standing on the rocks and weary from battle. Then he blinked and she was only a little girl again.

“I’m telling the universe what’s gonna happen. And the universe is gonna listen! You’ve gotta put it out there, ‘ttebane!”

“Well if that’s what we’re supposed to be doing.” Springing to his feet, he hopped down to stand beside her and cupped both hands around his mouth, raising his voice to scream up in to the night. “I’m gonna be the best Hokage EVER!”

“Hey! We’re supposed to be telling the universe to do good things for me!” Kushina reached over to shove his hip, probably hoping to knock him over sideways although she didn’t manage to so much as budge his stance.

Naruto chuckled and ruffled her hair.

“Alright then. Only good things for you.”

Her self-satisfied grin was so smug he very nearly lost his composure but he managed to keep it together long enough for her to spin back to the water and shriek her dreams out across the ocean. Then his mirth tapered off in to a fond, gentle smile.

It might have sounded like a placating sentence to her but Naruto had meant those words more than any he had ever spoken in his entire life. They were his one true wish for her and for her future, the one dream he hoped the universe would hear from him. Because as much as he loved her simply because she was his mother, Naruto was certain that no one could spend a month at this little girl’s side and not learn to love her just for herself.

And he wanted only good things for her always.


	5. Chapter 5

As Shizuko had estimated, it took exactly seven days for the friend she contacted to receive her letter and make their way here to Uzushio. Naruto spent every moment of those seven days soaking up as much time with Kushina as he possibly could. They were even given permission to slough off on training and disappear for hours at a time to explore the trees and lakes and pools that dotted the island. Kushina showed him the spot she wanted to build a secret fort and Naruto showed her his rasen-shuriken, tossing a small version of it in to the ocean just to hear her shriek when the wave it kicked up soaked her from head to toe.

While they explored they kept up endless conversations, both of them feeling the crunch of time and the need to pass as much information between them as possible. Naruto told Kushina everything he knew about being a jinchūriki and how to tame the tailed beast she would someday host, even going so far as to hold her hand and allow her in to the mindscape where Kurama greeted her with a full mouth of grinning teeth. In return she told as many stories as she could of her six short years of life. She told him her likes and dislikes, her favorite bedtime stories, and together they made as many memories as they possibly could.

Though he knew that when he left this would be the end for him, it was Naruto’s hope that Kushina would be able to make new memories with him after he was eventually born in this new timeline.

On the seventh day Naruto woke from where he had lain a bedroll across the grass-covered roof of Kushina’s home and sat up to smile at her still sleeping form beside him. Camping out on their last night had been her idea; she’d called it an adventure and he hadn’t been able to resist the mischief if her smile. Now she had twigs in her hair and bags under her eyes from staying up so late talking about all the things she wanted to do and see in the big wide world. Naruto smiled as he picked out one of the twigs. What a kid.

He had time to make breakfast and wake her just enough to coax the hot oatmeal in to her belly before a young boy with his red hair cropped short came to tell them that Shizuko wished to see them in her office. Kushina dropped her bowl with a clatter and launched herself in to his lap, wrapping her arms around him as tightly as she could. Since he wasn’t sure if he was even capable of words right then, Naruto said nothing as he desperately squeezed her back. It took a long time for either of them to let go.

The Uzukage met them with a no-nonsense sort of expression despite the uncharacteristic gentleness hidden in her gaze. Beside her stood a tall willowy woman with blonde hair and unmistakable eyes.

“A Yamanaka?” Naruto blurted. Kushina made a tiny sound of interest while Shizuko sighed, probably in despair over his lack of manners.

“Yes. Uzumaki Naruto, may I introduce Yamanaka Chie. She has travelled for many days to do me – and you – a great favor. It would behoove you to show her a little respect.” Her words were accompanied by a rapid loss of all the softness that had been her expression. Apparently pity only lasted until he’d done something to embarrass her.

Rather than be intimidated by a woman whom he would never see again after today, Naruto ignored her in favor of offering Kakashi-sensei’s signature two-fingered salute to the woman watching him with a smile.

“Hiya.”

“It’s good to meet you, Uzumaki Naruto.” Chie bowed her head in greeting to both him and Kushina. “Shizuko-san has already explained to me all I needed to know in the letter she sent but it is my understanding that you are as of yet uninformed. Perhaps we should go over what is about to happen before I begin. If your mind fights against my touch there could be consequences.”

“Uh…yeah that doesn’t sound good. Shizuko-baa-chan, are you ever gonna tell me what’s going on?”

Naruto got a double thrill out of watching the Uzukage’s face twitch in disgust at being addressed in such a manner and then watching Chie try to hide her smile of amusement.

“Our honored guest is going to ensure that you understand the complexities of sealing in a mere couple of hours. No, shut your mouth, I’m already _trying_ to explain. Chie-san here is a master of one of the more unique Yamanaka talents: memory sharing. She cannot transfer information directly between our minds but she can transfer memories. Your overuse of the shadow clone jutsu has left your mind uniquely trained to accept and integrate dozens of memories almost instantly – and that is what we are taking advantage of today.”

“Let me see if I get this right.” Naruto scratched the back of his head in deep thought. “Yamanaka-lady is gonna take your memories and put them in to my head so I remember _you_ learning about sealing?”

“Precisely,” Shizuko nodded, looking relieved that she didn’t have to explain herself a second time.

“Huh. Cool!”

Chie cleared her throat to disguise a laugh before beckoning him over gently.

“Shall we begin?” she asked. Naruto only made it one step towards her before he was tugged back by two small hands in a vice grip around his forearm. He looked down to see Kushina staring back up at him with a quivering chin and watery eyes.

“Do you have to?” Immediately his heartbeat sped up until he worried it might jump straight through his ribcage. He knelt down in front of her with tears gathering in his own eyes.

“You’ll see me again,” he promised. Kushina stuck her bottom lip out in disbelief and he tapped it with one finger. “Promise. When you grow up and you marry my dad, you’ll get to spend my whole life with me. And it’ll be so awesome and we’ll both be so…so happy.” He wanted to say more but was forced to stop when his own chin began to wobble dangerously and he knew if he continued they would both end up blubbering on the floor for hours.

“I’ll miss you until I see you again,” she told him in a voice more innocent than he had heard her use before.

Almost trembling with the force of his own emotions, Naruto forced a smile on to his face and tried to lighten her mood. “Right back at ya, kiddo.”

He wiped at his eyes unashamedly as he rose to his feet, not commenting on the way both Shizuko and Chie were pointedly looking anywhere but at him, kindly giving the two of them as long as they needed for their little moment. But the longer he let it drag out the harder it would be to leave and he knew that. So, with a heavy heart and his stomach feeling like it might drop out through his shoes, Naruto straightened his back and turned to face his doom.

“Okay, ladies. Let’s learn some sealing!”

Chie came forward immediately, explaining what she was going to do. Despite listening carefully to every word she said Naruto was barely able to concentrate enough to understand half of it.

Nerves danced under his skin as Shizuko stepped forward as well and Chie lifted a hand to each of their foreheads. He closed his eyes when he was bidden and tried to keep as still as possible. Warm fingers pressed against his skin, gathering chakra to each point separately, and then there was the sudden sensation of rushing, swimming up through a memory not his own.

Information rushed in quickly but it turned out Shizuko had been right: he processed it all fairly easily, years of experience using dozens of clones at once had given him the ability to sort through a sudden influx of memories at lightning speed. It was one of the only things he’d ever been smarter at than any of his friends. He took full advantage of his unrealized specialty now to take a walk back through another person’s lessons from long ago, reliving her journey as she learned the fine art of fūinjutsu. Kanji, ley lines, and base materials raced through his head, patterns and cause points dancing behind his eyes until they felt imprinted on his brain.

When it was all over Naruto felt like his head was almost too full and yet he wasn’t overwhelmed, thankfully. He’d sort of expected to feel different afterwards, like a new person or maybe brimming with energy to use these new skills, but instead the memories had assimilated so well it felt as though he’d had this information for years already. The only excitement he felt came from himself and his natural exuberance – which, admittedly, was always more than enough.

“Alright!” Naruto clapped his hands together. “Let’s get me back through time!”

Peripherally, he was sort of aware that his head was now full of knowledge from the top sealing expert in an entire village of sealing experts, but that didn’t mean a lot to him when he had no other frame of reference to compare himself to. To him it felt natural to draw the seal in his mind perfectly on the first try, fingers flying through a lengthy collection of hand signs before slapping one palm down on the ground decisively. Immediately a fully formed seal sprang up in place, the black ink spreading out from underneath his palm and glowing faintly for a few moments until it subsided back to a dull sheen. Naruto looked over his handiwork with satisfaction and knew without checking that it would be flawless.

Shizuko, on the other hand, felt a need to check it over and confirm that he hadn’t misinterpreted any of the information he’d just assimilated from her. Pinching her lips, she stepped around Chie and bent down to inspect each and every corner of the seal he’d drawn. Naruto rolled his eyes but waited patiently until she stood back up with an expression of reluctant satisfaction.

“Good enough?” he said. She fixed him with a withering look and did not answer.

“Time for the ultimate test of your skills, yes?” Chie asked with a diplomatic smile.

“Right!”

Pumping his fist in the air once, Naruto brought it back down to crack his knuckles and grinned. This time he wouldn’t be taken off guard by the seal’s effects and he couldn’t wait to see the look of jealousy on all his friends’ faces when he described it all to them.

But before he could go, he had one last thing to say.

Kushina has her chin held high and her hands twisted together so tightly her knuckles were turning white. Naruto looked at her and tried to decide if he was seeing a little girl or his mother before quickly deciding that it didn’t matter. She was both and she would forever more be both whenever he thought of her. In his younger days Naruto knew he would have thrown himself across the room for just one more hug, just one more goodbye, but adulthood had eventually taught him what he had never fully understood in his youth: that there was a time for letting go, and that it was okay to do so.

“I love you,” he told her quietly. “I will always love you…mom.”

“Bye-bye for now, Naruto-kun.” Instead of letting him see her cry again she gifted him with her sunniest smile, all teeth and brilliance and fire, the little red hot habanero. “See you later!”

Naruto felt butterflies take off inside his stomach as he whispered in a thick voice, “Yeah. Later.”

Behind him, Shizuko cleared her throat and he almost appreciated the interruption. He wrenched his eyes away from the last sight of his mother he would ever see, not allowing himself to hesitate as he knelt down and slammed his palm in to the center of the seal all in one motion. A single spark of chakra was all it needed to spring to life.

As had happened the first time, bright light erupted from the markings and golden chains burst from the center to wind about his limbs and secure him in place. The bindings would stop him from shifting as he passed through the time channel and keep him safe from the possibility of accidentally dropping a limb or two in the wrong time period. His body felt as though it were falling down and down and down endlessly but this time he was expecting the sensation and kept his eyes open to watch the way reality itself spun in circles around him like a whirlpool of color and shadow.

It seemed strange to him that travelling through time would feel like it was _taking_ time; it seemed like it should have been an instant thing. Watching the vortex wind its way about him gave him nothing to do but worry and hope everything would work the way it was supposed to. Instead, he used those few precious moments to plan.

With his newfound knowledge he had been able to construct his seal so that he would arrive at exactly the second he had left so he needed to remember what had been happening at that precise moment as well as decide how he was going to handle to situation. If he remembered correctly Shikamaru had advised him to make himself scarce, which was how he ended up hiding behind a dusty old bookcase while he tried to think of somewhere smarter to hole himself away. Sai and the other former ROOT members didn’t seemed driven to do anything but search for him, not harming anyone else in the process unless they got in the way, but they had made it clear their goal was to gain control of the village in the current Hokage’s place.

Parchment and wood materialized underneath him as though he’d never left. Dust drifted calmly through the air, glittering in the fading glow of the seal. Naruto brushed his palm reverently over the scroll which had sent him hurtling away in to a new reality. Only then did he realize that he’d never even thought to wonder who it really was that drew this seal in the first place. Had it been his mother? But if it had then how could she have known to do so in her original timeline? And where would she had learned to do so? Could it have been someone else of their bloodline, a random scroll rescued from the libraries of Uzushio after it was destroyed?

He had no way of finding out now, however, so Naruto was quick to put it out of his mind. Rising to his feet, he set his jaw and straightened his clothes. A new haori would need to be commissioned for him since he’d left his behind in another time.

There was no one in the hallways outside the file room when he strode through the door and Naruto chewed his lower lip, trying to think of the first place he should go looking for Sai. With a shrug he simply stood still and reached out with his inner senses, drawing in nature chakra until he felt that familiar warmth behind his eyes which signified the transformation to sage mode. Like a switch being activated he was suddenly aware of every chakra point in the entire village. Finding Sai was easy, like walked down a well-trodden path.

Actually, he thought as he hopped out the closest window and scaled the building, upwards should really have been the first place he checked. Of course Sai would be floating around on the back of one of his ink creations, using the advantage of height to track down his quarry.

Naruto hauled himself up on to the roof of the Hokage tower and paused to take a look around for himself. All across the village he could see groups of former ROOT shinobi facing off against their friends and comrades, expressions blank and body language wooden. Thankfully most of the tactics he could see appeared to be centered around delaying and detaining the controlled shinobi rather than injuring them, as it appeared the knowledge that they were unable to determine their own actions had spread.

Just one rooftop over Shikamaru could be seen trying to pin down several men at once with his shadow stitching, backed up by Ino and Choji as always. Naruto ignored the startled shout as his three friends spotted him out in the open and cupped both hands around his mouth to project his voice up in to the sky.

“Hey Sai! You lookin’ for me!?”

With just a touch of chakra in his vocal chords he was able to echo his words loud enough to catch the man’s attention several dozen feet up and half a village away. Immediately the black and white ink bird whirled and dove straight for him. Naruto grinned as he backed up to give his old teammate some room to land.

“That was foolish of you,” Sai’s voice told him robotically, dismissing his Super Beast creation.

“Nah,” he protested. “How am I supposed to fix you if you don’t come closer?”

“I cannot be fixed.”

Sai’s dark eyes begged him to run even as his hands reached for the tanto strapped between his shoulder blades. He made it three steps before the midday shadows came to life around and ensnared his legs, crawling up his body to hold him motionless.

“What are you thinking!?” Shikamaru snarled as he hopped up over the edge. Naruto nodded in appreciation.

“Thanks Shika. Hold him for me, would you? I want my friend back.”

Ino and Choji both touched down on the rooftop next to their teammate to join their voices with his in protest but Naruto listened to none of them. He approached Sai with an easy smile and both hands at the ready. Where he was used to seeing only pale white skin, the poor man’s face was absolutely covered with complicated twisting lines of harsh red, indicating a seal drawn in blood. Luckily, kanji on his cheeks and forehead easily gave away what would be needed to unravel it all.

Naruto’s hands flew through a set of hand signs he’d never made before despite what his memories told him before reaching out and pressing his palm to Sai’s forehead, releasing the image in his mind with a controlled burst of chakra.

Sai gasped raggedly as the dark lines on his face receded, slithering down his skin like the shadows that held him until they had gathered on his tongue as nothing more than a pool of ink and old blood. With a startled cough he spat the mixture out and looked up with wide, hesitant eyes.

“N-Naruto? What did you do? Is it over?”

“Yeah, you’re good now. You can let go of him Shika!”

After a moment of hesitation, Shikamaru friend did so. Then they all stepped aside as Ino flew between them to throw herself in to her husband’s arms and shower his face with relieved kisses. Naruto turned away from their display to give them a little privacy. Once facing the other direction, he laughed in what he hoped was an endearing manner and scrubbed at the back of his hair as his closest advisor gave him a narrowed eye look which demanded explanation.

“What the hell did you do?” Shikamaru asked. “And since when do you know fūinjutsu?”

“Ah it’s a long story. Let’s go round up everyone else so I can get rid of their seals too and then I’ll tell you all about it. Has anyone been hurt?”

“No one so far. Whatever you’ve got up your sleeve, it sounds like it’s going to be quite a story. Why do you have to be such a troublesome Hokage?” Shikamaru shook his head while Choji patted him consolingly on the arm. “Alright, let’s go. Your wife is probably worried sick about you and it’s my job to keep you safe.”

Naruto waved to Ino and Sai as he pushed off towards another roof, not bothering to make them come along. Shikamaru’s shadows would be enough and any other Nara they encountered could help out just as well. Hopefully it would all be over quickly because, more than anything, he simply couldn’t wait to get home after so long away and spent some quality time with his children.

He had some amazing stories to tell them about their grandmother.


End file.
